Guardians are deleting Destiny 2 bosses with explosive 'Argent Ordnance' Rocket Launcher build

With the release of Season of Arrival, and its new Seasonal mods, another somewhat underutilized Heavy weapon has gained some ways to significantly up its damage against Major and Boss enemies.

This new build has ‘rocketed’ this weapon to the top end of the DPS charts and created fun new ways to deal with Destiny 2’s toughest enemies. This is the Argent Ordnance Rocket Launcher build.

Full credit to Destiny Youtuber Rick Khakis for popularizing the build.

Mods

Argent Ordnance

This build heavily revolves around the new mod added in Season of Arrival named ‘Argent Ordnance’ and the ‘Charged with Light’ mechanic that was introduced in Season of Dawn.

This mod has a Solar affinity and costs 5 energy. It’s description reads: “While Charged With Light, dealing damage with a Rocket Launcher to a powerful combatant gives you a major increase to Rocket Launcher damage for a short time, consuming one stack of Charged with Light.”.

The description for this mod is a bit misleading and you would be forgiven for thinking that you need to deal damage before the damage buff is given but this is not the case.

Once you are Charged with Light simply having a Rocket Launcher in your hands will give the ‘Godslayer Warheads’ buff which will increase the damage of the next rocket fired.

This extra damage comes to a respectable 20% increase with additional copies of the mod giving a further 5% each.

Taking Charge

The fastest and easiest way to become Charge with Light is to use the Season of Dawn mod ‘Taking Charge’ which gives one stack of Charged with Light for every Orb of Light that is picked up.

This can be easily combined with a Primary Masterworked weapon to make a constant supply of Orbs to keep the Stacks of Light at their maximum.

Taking Charge has no elemental affinity or armor type so can be slotted into any piece of gear that can take a Season of Dawn mod. This is an essential mod for this build.

Supercharged

Another Season of Dawn armor mod that should be used is the mod ‘Supercharged’ which increases the maximum number of Charged with Light stacks from 3 to 5.

This mod has a Solar affinity and costs 5 energy.

This increase in available stacks will essentially increase the uptime for the increased Sword damage and increase the overall DPS of the build. This mod is essential.

Oppressive Darkness

Oppressive Darkness is an Artifact mod that causes an enemy to take an extra 30% damage for a short time after it is damaged by a Void grenade. While this mod is not essential for the build to work who can say no to an extra 30% damage?

The only downside to this mod is that it can only slot into a Class Item and costs 6 energy.

Stacks on Stacks

Another Dawn mod that isn't 100% necessary but will give you some breathing room with generating Orbs of Light is ‘Stacks on Stacks’.

This mod gives you an extra stack of Charged with Light for every stack of Charged with Light.

Essentially this mod doubles the value of each Orb of Light so can be of great use if you are struggling with consistently generating Orbs.

Stacks on Stacks has Void affinity, takes 4 energy and unfortunately comes with a drawback of giving a -10 Recovery stat debuff so just be aware of that.

Blast Radius

There is a second mod called ‘Blast Radius’ that isn't 100% necessary but if you can fit it into your energy budget then it will help a significant amount.

Blast Radius generates Orbs of Light for multikills with Grenade Launchers or Rocket Launchers so this does give some extra orb generation as when firing at a boss you tend to also kill some lesser enemies in the surrounding area.

This essentially allows you to passively generate orbs while dealing damage to the main boss. Blast Radius is a Season of Dawn mod, has Solar affinity and costs 3 energy.

Misc. Mods

That’s all of the necessary mods but to bring this build up to its full effectiveness be sure to add in more Rocket Launcher mods such as the Rocket Launcher Scavenger, Rocket Launcher Reserves and Rocket Launcher Ammo Finder.

Weapons

Wardcliff Coil

There are quite a few reasons why at the present time this is the best Rocket Launcher to use.

While Wardcliff might not deal the greatest damage to a singular target compared to some other Rocket Launchers, its area of effect damage combined with its Masterwork means Wardcliff is great at generating orbs to continue dealing bonus damage.

The weapon is great for spraying in the general direction of enemies to then watch the homing rockets fly towards them, obliterate them, and then generate a couple orbs for you to pick up and continue your Rocket Launcher killing spree.

While firing Wardcliff at a Boss it's very likely that some of these homing rockets will detour to kill some minor enemies, so not only are you dealing significant damage to a boss but also generating Orbs of Light without even trying.

Two-Tailed Fox

Two-Tailed Fox can work decently enough with this build mainly due to one reason, the Godslayer Warheads buff lasts long enough after damage is dealt for both rockets fired from this weapon to receive the damage buff.

While Two-Tailed Fox is not as great at dealing with multiple enemies as Wardcliff Coil is, the Fox is much better at dealing direct damage to bosses.

Deathbringer

Deathbringer can fulfill a similar spot to Wardcliff Coil if you have yet to pick up this weapon but it is just a worse form of it.

While Deathbringer can still do great damage to a singular target it requires more thought and concentration than Wardcliff in order to time the explosion to have the void orbs fall onto the boss.

Deathbringer can still be useful for both dealing damage to a boss and killing lesser enemies as it's likely that at least a few of these Void orbs will track onto these lesser enemies and create Orbs of Light.

Legendary Rocket Launchers

Many Legendary Rocket Launchers can still work with this build, there are just a few perks you need to search for in order to reach their full effectiveness.

'Demolitionist’ is a great perk to use with this build as it refills the equipped weapon’s magazine when a grenade is thrown.

This means you are able to fire a rocket, throw a Void grenade to activate Oppressive Darkness, and then immediately fire another rocket without having to reload. This perk really helps in the DPS department.

‘Cluster Bombs’ is another much desired perk as if the Rocket Launcher has been fully masterworked then this is a great way to passively generate orbs much like the above Wardcliff Coil.

Firing at a Boss will cause the cluster bombs to explode around the target, hopefully killing a few lesser enemies and creating Orbs of Light. As a bonus, Cluster Bombs also gives a small increase to over DPS.

‘Clown Cartridge’ and ‘Ambitious Assassin’ are two great perks on Rocket Launchers for this build as both of them give ways to increase the standard Rocket Launcher magazine size of 1. More time firing and less time reloading means higher DPS.